Obama to hold Facebook town hall; kicks off campaign fundraising in Bay Area

President Barack Obama talks with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg before a dinner with Technology Business Leaders in Woodside, California, Feb. 17, 2011. Also pictured, left to right, are Carol Bartz, Yahoo! President and CEO; Art Levinson, Genentech Chairman and former CEO; Steve Westly, Founder and Managing Partner, The Westly Group; and Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman and CEO of Google.
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Hoping to grab some high-tech luster and begin filling the campaign war chest he'll need in 2012, President Barack Obama will visit Facebook this month for an online town hall event with CEO Mark Zuckerberg before going to San Francisco for a series of pricey fundraisers, including a $35,800-a-plate dinner hosted by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff.

Obama, who announced Monday he would seek re-election, is using the two-day visit to Silicon Valley and San Francisco as an initial lap of the 2012 presidential campaign. He is expected to return to the Bay Area multiple times before the election.

Facebook and the White House jointly announced Tuesday that Obama will visit the Palo Alto headquarters of the social network on April 20, where the president will hold a special "Facebook town hall" event that will stream live over Facebook and the White House website, starting at 1:45 p.m. Zuckerberg and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg will moderate and sit onstage with the president, in front of an audience of about 1,000 Facebook employees, small-business leaders and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

While the president is expected to take some questions from the audience, the majority will be selected from questions people post for Obama on Facebook or the White House website over the next two weeks.

Advertisement

Political insiders said the Bay Area offers the dual political advantage of being a fertile fundraising area for Democrats as well as allowing politicians to associate themselves with the world-changing technology of Silicon Valley.

Former President Bill Clinton "is really the one that tilled this soil in Silicon Valley before anyone else, and it proved to be very beneficial -- not only for the dollars, but also with high technology in Silicon Valley. That plays very well in Peoria and everywhere else," said Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone, a Democratic Party activist.

"Yes, the tech people have a lot of money," said Barbara O'Connor, emeritus director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Sacramento State, "but I think he's interested in getting the message out to as many people as possible in an interactive format. That's important because you get to hear what people are thinking."

A presidential first

Enter "Facebook Live," a streaming interview feature that the social network launched last year and has since featured one-on-one interviews with figures ranging from rock star and activist Bono and talk show host Conan O'Brien to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and politicians like Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich. But this is the first time a sitting president has used Facebook Live to reach out directly to voters.

"We're honored that President Obama will be visiting headquarters later this month and will be using the Facebook platform to communicate with an international audience," said Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman. "We're really heartened that political figures are using Facebook to organize and reach people in a direct, personal and simple way that was really unimaginable a decade ago."

After his Facebook event, Obama will move on to three fundraisers in San Francisco. In addition to the April 20 dinner hosted by Benioff and his wife, Lynne, some Bay Area Democrats received invitations this week for "a vibrant reception" at the Nob Hill Masonic Center that same afternoon, with prices ranging from $250 to $10,000 a person, and a breakfast the next morning.

Dan Newman, a strategist who has worked for a number of prominent Democratic candidates, predicted the president will make several trips to the Golden State.

"He's always recognized the importance of California and Silicon Valley and the role that innovation and the new energy economy has as a piece of his national economic picture," Newman said.

Tough choices, tough questions

Obama has been a pioneer in the political use of technology; Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes played a key role in his campaign's use of the Internet and social media in 2008 for fundraising and to rally volunteers. Obama launched his re-election campaign Monday in part with a YouTube video, and he has 7.2 million followers on Twitter. With the White House and congressional Republicans in the midst of a deadlock over the federal budget and potentially headed for a shutdown of the federal government, the Facebook Live session may focus more on issues like the economy than technology.

"Americans have to make tough choices about how to live within their means while still investing in their future, and the president's choices are no different. The president is looking forward to talking directly to the American people and sharing his commitment to making deep cuts, so that we can continue to invest in areas like innovation that will help our economy continue to grow," said Adam Abrams, a White House spokesman.

Already Tuesday, Facebook members had posted tens of thousands of questions for Obama at the event site on Facebook. Many of them were not softballs.

"You say we are pulling the troops out of Iraq but what about the ones who keep getting sent into Afghanistan?" wrote Alicia Gasser of Rexford, Idaho.

Mercury News staff writer John Woolfolk contributed to this report. Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/swiftstories.